Without a piece of paper with Adam's signature saying otherwise,
the copyright remains with him. So Ed should ensure he does not
change the copyright notice.

That brings me a new issue, with more doubts, so I reproduce the messages I
had with Ed.
edward barlow wrote:

yes it was - although at some point i transitioned it to adam bryant who was
at MIT (or was it boston university). i lost touch with him tho"

I wrote:

I have a copy of conquer v4, with a copyright statement in the
header.h file that starts
with:
" /* conquer : Copyright (c) 1988, 1989 by Ed Barlow. "

I was wondering if you could allow permission to include the package
into Debian GNU/Linux, that would require to change the permissions to
permit the Debian or other GNU/Linux distributers to include the
binaries and sources.

edward barlow wrote:

go for it.
im glad anyone still wants to play it!

So, I replied:

Then, if you allow it, I will package conquer v4 changing sources
license to the GNU
General Public License, to allow its distribution,modification as free software.

Also I will need to ask about this in linux.debian.legal to see if
this is just enough.
Would you mind if I quoted your email?
Further statements maybe required by your part.

edward barlow wrote:

no prob

So, I have been investigating.
It seems Adam Bryant developed a new version 5 of conquer:
http://www.cs.bu.edu/ftp/fs/pub/adb/beta/
where all the files hold notices disallowing redistribution of the
code with a notice
starting with.
/* conquer : Copyright (c) 1992 by Ed Barlow and Adam Bryant */
Some people managed to talk with Adam in 1997 where he said he
licensed conquer to a commercial developer, saying title would revert
back to him if the company didn't release anything in two years.
http://members.aol.com/heiska/ecframe/future.html
A press release in 1997 also seems to cerfify that:
http://web.archive.org/web/20020804001252/http://www.mythicentertainment.com/conquerpr.html
My doubt is, how this license transfering of the Adam Bryant code
could affect the old code of version 4 of conquer released in 1988 in
USENET, the one that Ed allowed me to relicense as Free Software.
Sorry for the sudden burdening of information, I tried to give all the
information I can.
-- Juan